“Tangled Up In Blue. I know that one. Choose that one,” says John Olson. “No, you do it. You choose it. I can’t figure this thing out. Which button? Just choose it. With your guitar. You figure it out. This is your thing, not mine. Dammit, Rob! I don’t want to learn how to do it. Just choose Tangled Up In Blue! Alright?!”

After spending the last few days at family gatherings and long, drawn-out meals, Rob Olson has done his best to bring about a moment of family bonding, by going out to his car and pulling out the Rock Band set he brought from his apartment back in Chicago. It took a lot of room, but he thought his family would appreciate it – Mom on the drums, Janet on the bass, and Dad on vocals.

“Whoa – echo, echo – echooooooo,” starts “Tangled Up In Blue”, as performed by John Olson. “Hellloooooooo echoooo. Wait, was that where I was supposed to start? Why are the words so small?”

Rob, once again, jumps in, “Dad, do you need me to pause it? See, look – it’s telling you what the words are and whether you need to be lower or higher.”

“You think Bob Dylan cared whether he sang lower or higher? I don’t think so. Do I have to sing like him? I don’t know if I can do that scratchy voice after all that eggnog. Messed with my pipes.”

“No, Dad – just sing the song. You know the words, right?”

And with that, John Olson threw himself into one of the most bizarre performances of “Tangled Up In Blue” that the world has ever seen.

“I mean, he started off like he was really trying to go for it,” Rob told us later. “I think he was still trying to do some sort of weird Bob Dylan impression, too, but he was starting off like he was really going to sing the song. But then he started just mumbling the words, and when he realized that the game was deducting points for that, he started doing the mumbling louder.”

Janet, Rob’s sister, added, “I’ve never seen him get like that. Like – he got up out of his chair and started to do a little dance. But the more he danced, he stopped mumbling the words and he started making up new ones. And the new ones were just kind of… scatting words about Christmas.”

“He was rapping,” said Rob’s mother, about the performance, “I think. He does that sometimes, when there’s a rapper on the Jay Leno. He pretends he’s a rapper. The kids would be so embarrassed if they saw him – well, I guess they are now.”

“The thing you forget,” Rob added, “Is that “Tangled Up in Blue” is like 7 minutes long. So I’m there playing a repetitive guitar lick, mom’s tapping out super easy mode on the drums, Janet’s struggling to do three notes in a row on the bass – and dad has been going on and on free-associating weirdness for almost 5 minutes.”

When the song finally ended, and the stats screen showed up, Rob didn’t wait for the song select screen to come up again. He walked to the TV, unplugged it, and tried his best to avoid looking his father in the eyes.

“Let’s, uh… Let’s go see Sherlock Holmes or something.”